The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Andrew Wheeler:

In the interest of determining what may be considered a fair view of Boing Boing's opinion on similar matters, here's one possible parallel:

Cory Doctorow, at Boing Boing, posts, approvingly but without commenting himself, a message from "JFarber" complaining about The New York Times, a privately owned media company, changing their web archives without notice or explanation.

Boing Boing is a privately owned media company which has just changed its web archives without notice or explanation.

To quote "JFarber" from that post: "Is it common journalistic practice to change old articles like that?"

The way I'd frame this is to say: if Boing Boing wants to operate as a media watchdog, they need to be careful about not doing the same things that they complain about when other media outlets do it. They are a company that puts out a regular media product: yes, it is free (but so is The Village Voice), and yes, it is on the web (but so is Slate). A lot of people, Boing Boing's principals among them, have been arguing for a decade that "blogs" can be just as serious and just as professional as any other media outlet, so hiding under the skirts of "it's just a blog" at this point is, at best, disingenuous.

To quote Teresa Nielsen Hayden (as mentioned first by #22):
"...a section about dealing with internet scandals and other PR disasters. A rudimentary notion of it:

(1.) Get out there and say something, fast.

(2.) Acknowledge that there have been screwups. Avoid passive constructions.

(3.) Explain what you’re doing to help fix the problem. Be telling the truth when you do it.

(4.) Give up all hope of sneaking anything past your listeners. You’ve screwed up, the internet is watching, and behind each and every pair of eyes out there is a person who knows how to Google.

(5.) Corporate-speak will do you more harm than good. Instead, speak frankly about what’s going on. React like a human being. Talk like one, too."

That's good advice. Will Boing Boing follow it?

The idea of not paying advances and splitting the proceeds isn't
even new in recent, big-company publishing: Vanguard (an imprint of
Perseus run by my old boss, Roger Cooper) has been doing exactly that
for several years. They even published the US trade edition of Greg Bear's novel Quantico.

I do detect a strong whiff of that ol' Internet snake oil about this
project -- that by selling mostly on the 'net, and selling a lot
directly to consumers, that magically things will be easier.

On the other hand, Miller is a major, incredibly respected figure,
and he presumably wouldn't jump ship from being the president of
Hyperion to reporting to Jane Friedman unless there was something solid
here.

I don't think this is either a wondrous new paradigm for all
publishing or a sneaky trick to steal from authors -- and I've seen
people saying both things.

On balance, it sounds like Miller thinks that he can publish a
certain kind of book (short, mostly nonfiction hardcovers at about $20)
in a certain kind of way (little in-store co-op, mostly on-line
promotions, unreturnable, possibly bundled with e- and audio versions)
strongly, and he wants to give it a try.

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